Hi Craig, I would consult them if I could find them :-) another thing I found out is the app throws the same errorr as before if I have the build set to 64 bit which I think was also contributing to all this trouble, I now have it set to Any CPU with 32 bit preferred checked and it works as expected. I only stumbled on this when I changed the build to Release and noticed the setting were different to Debug ( which worked ) the bitness of things has bitten me - thanks again.